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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22896490">Gem of My Beaches</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Findswoman/pseuds/Findswoman'>Findswoman</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Battle of Scarif, Beaches, F/M, Fanon wildlife, Maybe AU and maybe not, Scarif, The Force</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 12:01:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>577</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22896490</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Findswoman/pseuds/Findswoman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After Scarif, the Force laments, observes, and acts. Originally written as very belated and very ad-hoc entry for <a href="https://boards.theforce.net/posts/55913273">OTP Challenge #12: The Landscape of Love</a> at JCF Fanfic, on the prompt "beach."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Gem of My Beaches</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I remember it all, because I saw it all, because I <em>was</em> it all.<br/>
<br/>
I remember the moment the white-hot death blast scarred my ocean gem, my Scarif. It threw the oceans into a fierce boil, mortally scalding every creature from the tiniest krill to the schools of scalefish to the largest wahrgil. It sent the waters upward in a giant maelstrom of steam, another white-hot death. And the ocean floor lay exposed, its once teeming dwellers clinging to it shriveled, boiled, beached, dead.<br/>
<br/>
I remember, because I am shriveled, boiled, beached, and near dead along with them.<br/>
<br/>
In the whitened skies, watergulls immolated in midflight, midsong. On the beach—the gem of my beaches!—swaying palms and lush fronds burned in moments to ash. Sparkling sands (each grain itself a gem!) molten into waves of slag, engulfing the slender legs of the shorepipers...<br/>
<br/>
I saw them. I felt them. I was engulfed with them.<br/>
<br/>
For I <em>was</em> them. <br/>
<br/>
(Ah, work of sentients, unworthy of the name! For they do not know the pain they cause me: that once I have made a world, made its creatures, I cannot make them again! My Pipada, uprooted—my Lasan, devastated—my Jedha, obliterated—and now my Scarif—! Anguish fills me to know that these will not be the last…)<br/>
<br/>
And yet there <em>they </em>were.<br/>
<br/>
Ah, even my own creatures amaze me sometimes! Rebel and captain, she and he. Dirty, weak, broken, bedraggled as they staggered against each other there on the beach, the gem of my beaches. He spoke to her: “Your father would have been proud of you, Jyn.”<br/>
<br/>
And her tired smile shone like stardust through the grit on her face, and their hands touched, and they embraced. Heedless of the deadly blast rolling in, heedless of the sand turning to glass beneath their feet...<br/>
<br/>
They did not know it, but they were embracing me.<br/>
<br/>
In that moment <em>they</em> were the gem of my beaches. My chosen, the pinnacle of my creation. For they had set in motion the destruction of the destruction. Set in motion only: I knew what risks they had taken, what rules they had broken, whom they had lost, whom they had antagonized. I knew it would not fall to them to finish that work. But even in starting it they had brought me hope.<br/>
<br/>
And so I sent them my light.<br/>
<br/>
I blazed forth whiter, brighter, faster than the death blast. Now, they did not see, of course. Nor did they see <em>that other light,</em> either; they only felt and held and embraced each other, there on the beach. But I blazed, and came after them, and engulfed them. Engulfed them just as—</p><hr/>
<p>My light still holds them.<br/>
<br/>
Their work is unfinished. My work is unfinished. My next course of action will not finish the work, for I am the work. But still I hold them. Captain and rebel, he and she.<br/>
<br/>
I shall not be able to hold them long, for I must obey my own laws. I must decide. Do I take them to myself? (Along with the many, from both sides of the battle, that I have had to take this day.) What then? Or do I place them back on the beach—once the gem of my beaches!—that now lies bare and boiled, to drench beneath the driving rains the swollen clouds will unleash? What then?<br/>
<br/>
<em>And the lonely breeze rustling over the shore repeats: What then?</em><br/>
<br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The notion that the Force <i>is</i> its creatures, and its creatures <i>are</i> the Force, is influenced by a central tenet of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism#Jewish_Hasidism_and_Kabbalism">nondualist strain of Jewish mysticism</a>: that all creation is contained within the Deity, and that there is nothing that exists that is not the Deity. (Nondualist spirituality comes up in many other real-life mystical traditions, too; that’s just the one I know best.)</p>
<p>scalefish: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Scalefish. Specified as a Naboo fish in the Wook, but there’s no reason they couldn’t live on other planets, too, as is true of several other GFFA animals.</p>
<p>wahrgil: A large fanon aquatic mammal, imagined as a cross between a <a href="https://dni.fandom.com/wiki/Wahrk">wahrk</a> (a kind of whale-shark mashup from the D’ni/Myst fandom) and a <a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Purrgil">purrgil</a>.</p>
<p>shorepipers: fanon long-legged shorebirds, a GFFA version of sandpipers.</p>
<p><a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Pipada">Pipada</a>, <a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Lasan">Lasan</a>, <a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jedha">Jedha</a>, <a href="https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Scarif">Scarif</a>: All planets that suffered some kind of destruction or devastation (whether of their people, their physical environment, or both) at the hands of the Galactic Empire before the destruction of Alderaan.</p>
<p>“Their work is unfinished. My work is unfinished. My decision here will not finish the work, for I am the work”: Inspired by the following quote from the Talmud: “It is not for you to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it” (Mishnah Avot 2:16).</p>
<p>“the driving rains the swollen clouds will unleash”: A reference to my story <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/20338324">The Rains of Scarif</a>. And if you know that story (it’s a quick read and not hard to get to know), you may have an idea of “what then”...</p></blockquote></div></div>
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